May I begin with the words of a Master?
"The Master said, To make a mistake and not change; this is what one calls
making a mistake."
Some time ago I shared with some cyber friends the only portrait likeness
I have. One reason for doing so was to put a face to the words; out of the
conviction that I fully intend to meet with many of them, and I fully
intend to bring them all together into one place/space to meet each other
if they so choose to accept the invitation. I may not attend myself, but
that would be another posting of an entirely differing degree. But maybe I
look too far into a future to be unshared. Maybe. Another reason was I
thought I'd lost the image, a mere pencil sketch. Keeping a bit of paper
no bigger than a letter for twenty five years ain't easy. Another thing
that happens in a quarter century is that the paper starts to degrade.
Small marks, called 'foxing' appears in the paper. So I thought I'd get it
out and put it on the wall, like a posting. You'd be amazed what the
artist's eye can gather by reading your posts by way of portraits...;-)
Ron Kitaj who used to study that the RCA with David Hockney wrote that by
fifty we have the face we deserve. Except at twenty I had the same face I
have at nearly fifty. Mmmmmmm.
--on treating as optical illusions--
Yet hidden in this nasty bunch of nettles are flowers of rare beauty:
(Koestler of Galileo)
Galileo writes,
"Once upon a time, in a very lonely place, there lived a man endowed by
nature with extraordinary curiosity and a very pene- trating mind. For a
pastime he raised birds, whose songs he much enjoyed; and he observed with
great admiration the happy contrivance by which they could transform at
will the very air they breathed into a variety of sweet songs. One night
this man chanced to hear a delicate song close to his house, and being
unable to connect it with anything but some small bird he set out to
capture it. When he arrived at a road he found a shepherd boy who was
blowing into a kind of hollow stick while moving his fingers about on the
wood, thus drawing from it a variety of notes similar to those of a bird,
though by a quite different method. Puzzled, but impelled by his natural
curiosity, he gave the boy a calf in exchange for this flute and returned
to solitude. But reading that if he had not chanced to meet the boy he
would never have learned of the existence of a new method of forming
musical notes and the sweetest songs, he decided to travel to distant
places in the hope of meeting with some new adventure."
Subsequently, the man discovered that there are many other ways of
producing musical notes - from strings and organs, to the swift vibrations
on the wings of mosquitoes and the 'sweet and sonorous shrilling of
crickets by snapping their wings together, though they cannot fly at all'.
But there was an ultimate disappointment waiting for him:
"Well, after this man had come to believe that no more ways of forming
tones could possibly exist ... when, I say, this man believed he had seen
everything, he suddenly found himself once more plunged deeper into
ignorance and bafflement than ever. For having captured in his hands a
cicada, he failed to diminish its strident noise either by closing its
mouth or stopping its wings, yet he could not see it move the scales that
covered its body, or any other thing. At last he lifted up the armour of
its chest and there he saw some thin hard ligaments beneath; thinking the
sound might come from their vibration, he decided to break them in order
to silence it. But nothing happened until his needle drove too deep, and
transfixing the creature he took away its life with its voice, so that he
was still unable to determine whether the song had originated in those
ligaments. And by this experience, his knowledge was reduced to
diffidence, so that when asked how sounds were created he used to answer
tolerantly that although he knew a few ways, he was sure that many more
existed which were not only unknown but unimaginable."
Hubris is temporarily submerged by humility. Galileo was the first of a
race of modern experimental scientists convinced of the infalibility of
their 'exact empirical methods' ; in fact he created the type. It comes as
a surprise to hear him talk about things 'not only unknown but
unimaginable'. But this ultimate modesty, derived from a sense of wonder
close to mysticism, is found in all great scientists - even if hidden by
an arrogant facade, and allowed to express itself only on rare occasions.
Koestler.
"The Master said, To make a mistake and not change; this is what one calls
making a mistake."
Stand still, let the wind speak; that is Paradise. <> The temporal has to
dismantle itself so as to release the free energy to enter the eternal. <>
What is simpler than this?
Andrew J Campbell
--Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.